1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display device and an electronic apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Some related art transflective liquid crystal display devices utilize external light in bright places, in a manner similar to that in reflective liquid crystal display devices, and make the display visible with a backlight in dark places, in a manner similar to that in transmissive liquid crystal display devices. Such related art transflective liquid crystal display devices include a liquid crystal layer disposed between an upper substrate and a lower substrate, and a reflective film formed of a metal film made of aluminum or the like having a light-transmitting window provided on the inner side of the lower substrate. The reflective film functions as a semi-transmissive reflector. In this case, in a reflection mode, external light incident from the upper substrate passes through the liquid crystal layer, is reflected by the reflective film on the inner side of the lower substrate, passes through the liquid crystal layer again, and is emitted from the upper substrate to contribute to display. In contrast, in a transmission mode, light from a backlight incident from the lower substrate passes through the liquid crystal layer from the window of the reflective film, and is emitted outside from the upper substrate to contribute to display. Therefore, a part of the reflective film in which the window is provided serves as a transmissive display region, and the other part serves as a reflective display region.
In the related art transflective liquid crystal display devices, however, the viewing angle for transmissive display is narrow. This is because reflective display must be performed with one polarizer provided on the side of an observer because of the semi-transmissive reflector on the inner side of the liquid crystal cell so that parallax is not caused, and the flexibility of optical design is therefore low. In order to overcome this problem, Jisaki et al. proposed a new liquid crystal display device using homeotropic liquid crystal in “Development of transflective LCD for high contrast and wide viewing angle by using homeotropic alignment”, M. Jisaki et al., Asia Display/IDW'01, pp. 133–136 (2001) and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-350853. The liquid crystal display device has the following three features:
(1) A “VA (Vertical Alignment) mode” in which liquid crystal having a negative dielectric anisotropy is aligned perpendicular to the substrates, and is tilted by the application of a voltage;
(2) A “multigap structure” in which the thickness of a liquid crystal layer (cell gap) is different between a transmissive display region and a reflective display region (as for this structure, see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-242226); and
(3) A structure in which the transmissive display region is shaped like a regular octagon, and a protrusion is provided at the center of the transmissive display region on a counter substrate so that the liquid crystal can tilt in all directions in the region, that is, a “multi-domain structure”.